Osama is back to remind us that he remains free

So now we have a new video of (supposedly) Osama bin Laden directing some new threats at the west. [Read story.]

But that's fine. Bush has destroyed Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein, so we're in good shape. Uh-huh.

Thanks, George.

Blogger having technical difficulties

It looks as though my daily posts will arrive much later than usual, as Blogger is having technical difficulties...

They just keep on shooting the messengers

Now a CIA analyst has been fired for leaking information about the CIA's network of secret prisons to the press. [Read story.]

While I recognize that there are some intelligence secrets that must remain guarded, it seems that this kind of stuff only hits the fan when the leak exposes some kind of illegal action on the part of the Bush administration (e.g., using a secret network of prisons, outing a CIA agent, etc.).

In this case, we should be alarmed not by the leak but by the information that it revealed. This is supposed to be an open democracy. Secret prisons have no place here.

Shooting the messenger is an obvious attempt to cloud the issue.

Mike Carlton: "Tide turns on Dubya's wreck"

In an excellent column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Mike Carlton shares an Australian perspective of the Bush administration.

It's definitely worth reading.

An excerpt:
-----
SYDNEY, NSW, is a long way from Washington DC but, even at this distance, it is clear that the Bush Administration is falling to pieces.

In recent weeks, scanning the political coverage in the mainstream US media and sampling the blogs has been to watch a flood tide ebbing to reveal a rotting, skeletal hulk. It is the George W. Bush ship of fools, stuck in the mud for the world to see in all its mendacity, its incompetence, its faith-based stupidity.

It is possible, at this late stage, that even Bush himself has begun to realise something is wrong. That oddly simian face is ashen, the eyes leaden. The voice is shrill and its tone defensive.

"I'm the decider and I decide what's best," he squawked to reporters in the White House rose garden the other day, as the screws turned tighter on his disastrous Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Can you imagine Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Kennedy blurting something like that?
-----
[Read more.]

Bush irony of the week: Has protester arrested while verbally promoting freedom

In reflecting on the past week's events, the one that stands out in my mind took place during the visit to Washington of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

As Bush and Hu spoke about working together to advance freedom, the Secret Service forcibly removed a female protester who shouted a plea asking Bush to stop Hu from killing innocent people in China.

Instead, Bush apologized to Hu for the the fact that the woman exercised an essential liberty guaranteed by the Consitution. In essence, he was apologizing for democracy.

[Read story.]

Are meat eaters aiding global warming?

Today, 22 April, is Earth Day 2006.

Many will be marking this date by taking some action to benefit the planet, or to learn more about environmental issues.

On this day, you might also want to consider the effect that your diet has upon this planet.

Recent research suggests that eating meat may be "as bad for the planet as it is for our bodies."

According to one of the researchers, changing your diet can have an effect on the planet that is "comparable to the difference between driving an SUV and driving a reasonable sedan."

[Read more.]

I'm proud to be a Corolla-driving vegetarian.

More proof that lots of innocent people are being tortured at Gitmo

We have known for some time via reports by Amnesty International and other human rights/civil liberties groups that a majority of detainees by the U.S. military on the "war on terror" are probably innocent of any terrorist ties. They simply had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and/or fell victim to the U.S. military's policy of paying bounty hunters for random bodies. Or whatever.

But that doesn't matter to King George W. These prisoners have no rights. Guilty until proven innocent, but no legal means to prove your innocence.

Sound fair to you? I hope not.

Well, now that the Pentagon has been forced to release the names and nationalities of the 558 Gitmo detainees, the stuff is hitting the fan, and countries around the globe are demanding that the U.S. government cut the nonsense and release their citizens from unjust detention.

[Read more.]

Will Dubya listen? Or will he just continue to give the world an arrogant smirk -- with impunity?

William Fisher on torture policy: Getting closer to the top?

More good dirt from Bill Fisher: In a new piece on truthout.org, he reveals evidence of torture moving beyond "a few bad apples" to much higher up the tree.

An excerpt:
-----
In less than a month, we may finally get to hear from the army general who ordered commanders at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison to "get dogs."

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who ran the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then was sent to Iraq to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib, has been silent on his role in introducing cruel and degrading interrogation techniques to that prison.

Originally, Gen. Miller invoked his military rights not to incriminate himself. But last week, a military judge ordered prosecutors to produce him on May 17 as a witness for the defense in the trial of a military dog handler accused of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib.

Defense lawyers have said it was Miller who first told intelligence officers at Abu Ghraib to "get dogs" to exploit Arab fears of the animals.

As reported by The Washington Post, Miller's appearance "will give defense attorneys a chance to question Miller about the use of dogs in security and interrogation operations at Guantanamo and in Iraq. It also means lawyers could use Miller's testimony to attempt to draw connections between the alleged abuse and the policies developed by top Pentagon officials who had regular contact with Miller when he was the commander at Guantanamo."

Witnesses in other cases have testified that Miller went to Iraq at the request of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who wanted to "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib. Tactics used on detainees in Iraq - including dogs, a dog leash and placing women's underwear on their heads - were the same as those used on one Guantanamo Bay detainee in 2002.

So, it seems, we inch closer to the top - to the White House and Pentagon policy makers who sliced and diced the Geneva Conventions to redefine torture, and left the grunts who followed orders to pay the price.

Miller would be the first general and the highest-ranking officer to testify in any case connected to the now infamous abuses at Abu Ghraib. Lawyers for Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, 31, are the first to be successful in persuading a judge that his involvement could shed light on how dogs came to be used to threaten high-value detainees during interrogations in Iraq in late 2003.

One of Cardona's lawyers said he plans to question Miller about the Rumsfeld-inspired trip he made to Iraq to advise US officials on how to get better intelligence.
-----
[Read more.]

William Fisher: In terror war, not all names are equal

In Bush's world, Muslim charities are guilty of terrorism until proven innocent. And even when proven innocent, it might not matter.

In IPS News, Bill Fisher reports that the non-profit group OMB Watch has accused the U.S. government of using the "war on terror" to give preferential treatment to law-breaking companies like Halliburton (Dick Cheney's organization), while discriminating against (and shutting down) Muslim charities that often have no opportunity to prove that they have no ties to terrorism.

In Bush's world, you are judged not by the quality of the work you do, but by your skin color and religious affiliation. This is Bush's crusade.

[Read story.]

China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the USA: The top four countries that execute their citizens

Today, Amnesty International published its annual report on the death penalty.

According to an Amnesty press release, the U.S. remains one of the top executing countries, along with China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Together the four nations accounted for 94 percent of all executions worldwide in 2005.

George W. Bush must be so proud.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world (the civilized portion), the annual number of executions has fallen dramatically.

[Read more.]

"I'm the Decider, koo koo ka choo"

I don't often post humor to this site, but someone has created a great new song about George W. Bush that's worth checking out.

The lyrics and audio are available on the Huffington Post site.
[Check it out.]

Mark Morford: Iran, You Ran, Let's Bomb Iran

In his latest column, the inimitable Mark Morford analyzes Bush's desperate need to blow up another country -- this time possibly with nukes. [Read it.]

UN torture panel presses US on detainees

The United Nations committee against torture wants to hold the U.S. accountable for prisoner abuse and renditions. Will they succeed, or will Bush continue to find ways to evade accountability for his crimes?

From Reuters via truthout.org:
-----
The United Nations committee against torture has demanded that the United States provide more information about its treatment of prisoners at home and foreign terrorism suspects held in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

In questions submitted to Washington, the panel also sought information about secret detention facilities and specifically whether the United States assumed responsibility for alleged acts of torture in them, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.

"It is the longest list of issues I have ever seen," Mercedes Morales, a U.N. human rights officer who serves as secretary to the U.N. Committee against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, told reporters.

Washington is expected to send a delegation of 30 officials to defend its record at a meeting next month in Geneva of the committee, composed of 10 independent human rights experts.

The debate, set for May 5 and May 8, will focus on a report filed a year ago by the United States on its compliance with the Convention against Torture, which bans all forms of torture.

Washington said at the time it was abiding by the treaty and that any abuses of detainees in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were not systemic. Critics called the report a whitewash.

The U.N. committee has responded, asking firstly how memoranda from the U.S. Justice Department declaring that torture covers only extreme acts is compatible with the treaty.

It asked whether there had been any independent investigation into "the possible responsibility of high-ranking officials" for authorizing or consenting to acts of torture committed during interrogation of detainees.
-----
[Read more.]

Video: Terrorist training at Fort Benning

Most Americans have probably never heard of the School of the Americas (SOA), which was cleverly renamed to "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)" to try to dodge the stigma surrounding the SOA's reputation.

Basically, the SOA is a U.S. military-run training center based at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Latin American warlords and dictators are taught the art of torture and repression. They then use their new skills to violate human rights in their home countries.

A wonderful organization called SOA Watch has created an excellent new video to educate people about this issue. [Check it out.]

Iraqi women are worse off after American "liberation"

Bush keeps telling us how much better off the Iraqi people are now that we have "liberated" them from Saddam.

But some Iraqi women's rights groups disagree.

Who would you believe?

From Capitol Hill Blue:
-----
A new poll of leaders of Iraqi women's-rights groups finds that women were treated better and their civil rights were more secure under deposed President Saddam Hussein than under the faltering and increasingly sectarian U.S.-installed government.

This is doubly troubling. It's troubling first, because the Bush administration used the issue of women to justify its now widely criticized invasion of Iraq in part by promising to improve the situation of women.

It's troubling secondly, because the administration has issued news releases, held public meetings and tried to gain media attention (as well as U.S. public support) for all the "good" it's supposedly doing the women of Iraq via this invasion.

The poll was released last week by the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a U.N. news agency covering sub-Saharan Africa, eight countries in central Asia, and Iraq.

IRIN reports the survey findings as follows: "...women's basic rights under the Hussein regime were guaranteed in the constitution and more importantly respected, with women often occupying important government positions. Now, although their rights are still enshrined in the national constitution, activists complain that, in practice, they have lost almost all of their rights."
-----
[Read more.]

Way to go, Mr. President. Way to spread freedom. Not!

More fun with indefinite detention of innocent people

If you're detained by the U.S. government in the "war on terror" and then they discover that you have no ties to terrorism after all, they can keep you locked up anyway, just for fun.

Or so the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

[Read story.]

How long will the Statue of Liberty remain standing?

More tax dollars wasted

Last night at midnight was the deadline for filing 2005 income tax returns in the U.S.

And how are our tax dollars being spent?

Among other atrocities, our tax dollars are being spent paying performance bonuses to weapons contractors for projects that are years late, millions over budget, and often entirely non-functional.

[Read story.]

Again the Bush administration rewards the incompetent.

Yet, at the same time, they don't want to raise the minimum wage (currently $5.15 per hour) by a dollar or two.

God bless America. Yes, indeed.

Kucinich demands answers from administration about US troops in Iran

Is the U.S. already involved in military actin in Iran, without any Congressional debate or oversight?

There is growing evidence that this is the case.

CommonDreams.org today published a letter sent by Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) to George W. Bush, demanding an explanation. Kucinich is the Ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations.

Below is the text of Kucinich's letter:
-----
Dear President Bush:

Recently, it has been reported that U.S. troops are conducting military operations in Iran. If true, it appears that you have already made the decision to commit U.S. military forces to a unilateral conflict with Iran, even before direct or indirect negotiations with the government of Iran had been attempted, without UN support and without authorization from the U.S. Congress.

The presence of U.S. troops in Iran constitutes a hostile act against that country. At a time when diplomacy is urgently needed, it escalates an international crisis. It undermines any attempt to negotiate with the government of Iran. And it will undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts at the U.N.

Furthermore, it places U.S. troops occupying neighboring Iraq in greater danger. The achievement of stability and a transition to Iraqi security control will be compromised, reversing any progress that has been cited by the Administration.

It would be hard to believe that such an imprudent decision had been taken, but for the number and variety of sources confirming it. In the last week, the national media have reported that you have in fact commenced a military operation in Iran. Today, retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner related on CNN that the Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA, Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, reported to him that the Iranians have captured dissident forces who have confessed to working with U.S. troops in Iran. Earlier in the week, Seymour Hersh reported that a U.S. source had told him that U.S. marines were operating in the Baluchi, Azeri and Kurdish regions of Iran.

Any military deployment to Iran would constitute an urgent matter of national significance. I urge you to report immediately to Congress on all activities involving American forces in Iran. I look forward to a prompt response.

Sincerely,
Dennis J. Kucinich
Member of Congress
-----
[Read it on the Common Dreams site.]

Scientists say they're being gagged by Bush

If the facts are inconvenient to one's corporate fascist agenda, then all you have to do is suppress those facts. At least that's the way the Bush administration likes to do business. Corporate interests trump the truth every time. Planet be damned.

From yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:
-----
Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.

Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.

These scientists -- working nationwide in research centers in such places as Princeton, N.J., and Boulder, Colo. -- say they are required to clear all media requests with administration officials, something they did not have to do until the summer of 2004. Before then, climate researchers -- unlike staff members in the Justice or State departments, which have long-standing policies restricting access to reporters -- were relatively free to discuss their findings without strict agency oversight.

"There has been a change in how we're expected to interact with the press," said Pieter Tans, who measures greenhouse gases linked to global warming and has worked at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder for two decades. He said that although he often "ignores the rules" the administration has instituted, when it comes to his colleagues, "some people feel intimidated -- I see that."

Christopher Milly, a hydrologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, said he had problems twice while drafting news releases on scientific papers describing how climate change would affect the nation's water supply.
-----
[Read more.]

Another stark warning over climate change

Computer predictions in the UK are raising some dire warnings over the impending effects of climate change.

From BBC news:
-----
The Earth is likely to experience a temperature rise of at least 3C, the UK government's chief scientist says.

Professor Sir David King warned this would happen because world governments were failing to agree on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

He told the BBC that nations had to act now to tackle the warming expected to happen over the next 100 years.

And he said even if a global agreement could be reached on limiting emissions, climate change was inevitable.

The UK government and the EU want to try to stabilise the climate at an increase of no more than 2C, but the US refuses to cut emissions and those of India and China are rising quickly.

A recent report called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, produced by the Hadley Centre, one of the top world centres for projecting future climate, modelled the likely effects of a 3C rise.

It warned the situation could wreck half the world's wildlife reserves, destroy major forest systems, and put 400 million more people at risk of hunger.
-----
[Read more.]

And yet Bush continues to give the issue only some lame and useless lip service and absolutely no action. He doesn't want to inconvenience his corporate buddies by having them take measures to reduce their carbon emissions.

Progress in Europe's CIA torture probes

Aside from passing an anti-torture amendment recently that Bush blew off with a signing statement, the Congress of the United States of America appears to be afraid to take real action to address government/CIA complicity in extraordinary renditions.

But the Europeans aren't going to let it slide. They are taking matters into their own hands with some serious investigations that seem to be finally yielding some serious results.

I don't know what the prosecutorial options might be. I imagine that the prosecution by Europe of American entities would be difficult to do, for a number of reasons.

This is one glaring example of why the Bush administration has refused to be a party to the International Criminal Court. Bush, of course, believes himself to be above the law. And he and his lawyers do all they can to avoid any kind of accountability.

From Reuters via truthout.org:
-----
After months without a breakthrough, European investigators probing alleged CIA abuses in the war on terrorism are starting to sound more hopeful and will seek new evidence in the next few weeks.

A Washington Post report last November that the US Central Intelligence Agency had run secret prisons in Eastern Europe for al Qaeda suspects unleashed a spate of investigations which have so far failed to produce a "smoking gun."

But after several months when the issue largely faded from view, two developments in the past eight days have generated new headlines.

First Amnesty International detailed the case of three Yemeni men who were held for 13 months until May 2005 at a secret US facility, possibly in Eastern Europe.

Then the Council of Europe, a human rights organization, said on Wednesday at least one European state had admitted to handing over terrorism suspects to foreign agents.

"We have received official acknowledgement of 'handing over' individuals to foreign officials" in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Council head Terry Davis said, declining to name the country involved.

He may have been referring to Sweden, where a parliamentary ombudsman has criticized the security services over the expulsion of two Egyptian terrorism suspects who were handed over to US agents and flown home aboard a US government-leased plane in 2001. Human Rights Watch has said there is credible evidence they were later tortured.
-----
[Read more.]

On a related note: For a recent Amnesty International article on international justice, click here.

Decorated Air Force nurse barred for being a lesbian

It doesn't matter how well you do your job. What matters is who you share your bed with.

Ridiculous!

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
-----
In 1993, Maj. Margaret Witt was a poster woman for the Air Force's flight nurse recruiting program.

In her career of 18-plus years, the decorated operating room and flight nurse from McChord Air Force Base earned stellar reviews for her work, which included helping to evacuate the nation's wounded troops and humanitarian missions to aid civilians.

In 2003, President Bush awarded her the Air Medal for her Middle East deployment and, later, the Air Force Commendation Medal, for saving the life of a Defense Department worker.

Less than a year later, after an Air Force investigation, Witt, a reservist, was drummed out.

Her offense: a committed relationship, but with another woman, a civilian, from 1997 to 2003.

On Wednesday, Witt, 42, challenged her forced discharge in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Tacoma against Air Force officials and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The lawsuit, filed with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, seeks to prevent Witt's discharge, citing her First and Fifth amendment protections of free speech and due process.
-----
[Read more.]

Nat Hentoff: Supreme Court judges Bush

He calls it "the most important case in the Bush presidency". It could be.

In his column in this week's Village Voice, Nat Hentoff outlines the issues and implications in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, on which lies the fate of Guantanamo prisoners in particular and Constitutional rights in general.

An excerpt:
-----
The Supreme Court is now deliberating on the most important case in the Bush presidency, a case that can set precedents for future presidents during what the defendant, Donald Rumsfeld, admits will be a decades-long war against terrorism. It is so important that Chief Justice John Roberts made available audiotapes of the oral arguments on the same day. The last time I remember that happening was in the case of Bush v.Gore, which resulted in the Bush presidency.

On the surface, Hamdan v.Rumsfeld would appear to be primarily about the 10 prisoners at Guantánamo set to appear before military commissions established by the sole order of the president in Military Order No. 1 of November 13, 2001. As USA Today charged in a lead editorial on the day of the oral arguments, these commissions are "a set-up in which the executive branch alone serves as judge, prosecutor and jury; rules of evidence are one-sided and his lawyers don't even have the right to know what the [most crucial] evidence is."

But the much deeper significance of the case is emphasized in Hamdan's brief to the high court, calling on the justices to stop George W. Bush's "unprecedented arrogation of power."

A telling illustration of how the fate of Hamdan can encompass untold numbers, not only of suspected terrorists but also Americans, is the March 25 statement on C-SPAN of Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, Hamdan's military lawyer. Swift has long been persistently, publicly critical of the mockery of due process by these military commissions that the president and Donald Rumsfeld invented.

Said Swift: "Mr. Bush and his lawyers have made it clear that he wants a precedent [from this case] that says the president, as commander in chief, can arrest any person in the world and then put that person on trial before a military tribunal (or commission).

"They've made it very clear that these powers can be exercised against American citizens right here at home. The president talks about the global war on terror and his lawyers have gone into court frequently saying the United States is a battlefield in this war." (Emphasis added.)

Indeed, I remember the chill when John Ashcroft said the very same thing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and his successor Alberto Gonzales, a faithful vassal of the president, is also a true believer in this war. George W. Bush is the law.
-----
[Read more.]

National Archives participated in document cover-up

It used to be that the Bush administration would just mysteriously "disappear" people. Well, now they're disappearing public documents.

According to yesterday's headlines, the National Archives, whom We The People entrust with the documentation of our nation's history, turns out to have worked with the Bush administration to make certain documents disappear.

Hey, if it's not documented in the National Archives, you can't prove that it happened, I guess. And that apparently includes documentation that had previously been unclassified and accessed by countless researchers.

We can't erase those researchers' memories who may have seen the "disappeared" documents, but we can certainly now challenge their credibility, since there is no longer any official record to back up their claims. Apparently, that's now the American way.

From Capitol Hill Blue:
-----
The National Archives agreed to seal previously public CIA and Pentagon records and to keep silent about U.S. intelligence's role in the reclassification, according to an agreement released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The 2002 agreement, requested three years ago by The Associated Press and released this week, shows archivists were concerned about reclassifying previously available documents - many of them more than 50 years old - but nonetheless agreed to keep mum.

"It is in the interest of both (unnamed agency) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to avoid the attention and researcher complaints that may arise from removing material that has already been available publicly from the open shelves for extended periods of time," the agreement said.

The agreement was originally stamped "secret." The National Archives and Records Administration provided a redacted copy of the agreement to AP under FOIA this week and then posted the document on its Web site.

The agreement said the archives "will not acknowledge the role of (redacted) AFDO in the review of these documents or the withholding of any documents determined to need continued protection from unauthorized disclosure." AFDO stands for Air Force Declassification Office.

"NARA will not disclose the true reason for the presence of AFDO (redacted) personnel at the Archives, to include disclosure to persons within NARA who do not have a validated need-to-know," the agreement added.

National Archivist Allen Weinstein applauded the release of the agreement and said an internal agency review on how best to handle reclassification requests should be completed by the end of this month.

"It is an important first step in finding the balance between continuing to protect national security and protecting the right to know by the American public," Weinstein said.
-----
[Read more.]

Shame on the National Archives! I had always assumed that the Archives were run by high-level librarians, and librarians usually seem to care about truth and accuracy.

On the other hand, Laura Bush is a librarian, so never mind.

So what's next? Thought police? Oh, never mind. They're already here.

Let's be thankful for the Freedom of Information Act, for as long as it might remain alive. (Fingers crossed.)

Lakotas kick ass: South Dakota Native Americans defend reproductive rights at the sovereign nation level

My new heroes: Cecelia Fire Thunder and the Oglala Lakota tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota

Unless you've spent the past six weeks living under a rock, you've probably heard about how South Dakota passed a state law banning almost all abortions, even in the case of rape or incest. (Here come the 12-toed babies.)

Well, the eternally practical and sensible Native Americans in that state are taking matters into their own hands. According to truthout.org, "tribal president Cecelia Fire Thunder is taking a stand. She is invoking the Oglala Lakota tribe's status as a sovereign nation to surpass state law, by building a family planning clinic on the reservation."

I love it! Monumental kudos to them!

[Video: President Fire Thunder speaks with truthout]

Cindy Sheehan: A markerless grave in Vacaville

The right-wing nuts who have never had a child in harm's way are again attacking Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq.

Because she dares to question what "noble cause" her son died for, she is villified.

The Bushites "support the troops" by tormenting the mothers of the dead ones. (I guess they know better than to torment the mothers of the live ones.)

Cindy's latest response to their abuse is one of her most eloquent to date.

Here it is, courtesy of truthout.org:
-----
I am so tired of the Rovian, heartless, and ignorant smear machine attacking me and my family at every turn of my back.

The latest abomination in their scrutiny of my life is the fact that Casey has no "tombstone." As if it were anybody's business but Casey's family. I am sure every last person who has a problem with this has buried a child and they know what we are going through.

I am being smeared because I have a new car and I have "blown" through "$250,000.00" dollars of Casey's insurance money. I am sure that they have ready access to my bank accounts, too. I know I am writing this to compassionate people who would rather focus on an administration who lies, tortures, kills innocent people using conventional and chemical weapons, spies on its citizens without due process, and is treacherous in outing a CIA operative for petty high school-like revenge, thereby endangering her, her family, and her fellow CIA agents. If it weren't for these criminals, my son wouldn't need a tombstone.

I will tell the world why Casey has no marker yet. In the first place, does anyone who is attacking me know how Casey was brought home from Iraq? We picked him up in the United loading dock in a cardboard box and he was off-loaded into a hearse without one honor guard. We had to wait for about a half hour on a curb near the United freight area for his one escort, who rode from Dover Air Force Base in a seat, while Casey was treated as an over-sized piece of luggage. Has anybody held her other sobbing children who are sitting on a curb in San Francisco, waiting for the remains of their big brother to be carried over to the dock by a forklift?

Our so-called, illegitimate president has never attended a funeral, nor can families see the pictures of their loved ones as they are hauled like freight with flags on them from an immoral war zone. WE don't see them because Mama Bush doesn't want to "bother her pretty mind" with the images. America doesn't want to be bothered, either. We had a Casualty Officer who abandoned us when our mortuary refused to pay the cemetery and told us that the "government sent the money to the mortuary, so now it is your problem. You may have to sue the mortuary." Our government discards and dishonors its own.

My Casey wasn't always a soldier. He was a son and brother whose murder has left an aching hole in our lives worse than an amputation. Sooner or later, amputations heal and quit throbbing; this hole never will, or can, heal.

For the first year after Casey was killed, I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to place a TOMBstone on my son's grave. I didn't want one more marble proof that my son was dead. I couldn't even call where he was buried a "cemetery," I had to call it "Casey's Park." I placed fresh flowers in the cup every week and journaled there almost on a daily basis, and often laid on it and fell asleep and dreamed of my needlessly killed son. Have any of these people who claim that I am pissing on my son's grave even visited him? Have they visited the grave of any soldier needlessly or senselessly killed in George's war of choice for oil and profit? Have they sobbed uncontrollably for my first born who shouldn't even need a gravestone? No, all they want to do is attack a mother who wants to prevent other people from having to bury their own child. They want to perpetuate a war that has already killed many thousands of our fellow human beings for absolutely nothing.

Casey's shell is buried in Vacaville, California, not his spirit. He lives with me and he is constantly with me as I travel the world so other families, Iraqi or American, do not have to bury their children. Casey lives in the hearts of everyone who wants peace and works for peace. He will never truly die.

There are many people whom the Bush regime has killed, either directly or indirectly, by their murderous policies: there are people buried under rubble of Iraq and who were buried under the rubble of the World Trade Towers, and if their families were lucky they could find small parts to bury, before their remains were carted away in the enormous trucks and barges; there are people still unaccounted-for in the swamps of New Orleans and in refrigerated trucks in Mississippi that will never even have graves, let alone gravestones. The Bush regime is good for business, all right; especially the funeral business.

I know these people are searching for proof that I am a horrible person, and it must be evidence that I didn't love Casey if he doesn't have a marker. I know that they can't support a criminal regime that is slipping into fascism, so they have to attack a mom for the "crime" of being broken-hearted and trying to save lives.

What they don't know is that they can't stop me from trying to save lives. No matter what they cook up next.

It is too important. No more needless gravestones. No more wasted lives.
-----
[View it on the truthout site.]

Can you have a soul, can you have a conscience, and not be brought to tears by Cindy's words above?

Nuking Iran: More from Seymour Hersh

So, you read Seymour Hersh's piece in The New Yorker about Bush's eagerness to attack Iran, which I linked to yesterday, and you want to know more?

No problem. Click here for transcripts and video of Hersh's appearance Sunday on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

Seymour Hersh's Iran article online now!

As it turns out, the new Seymour Hersh article I mentioned here yesterday is already available online.

[Read it.]

Of course the Bush administration is denying Hersh's allegations. But Hersh does not make things up.

Bush undermines freedom of the press

No wonder it's hard to find a real journalist these days.

For one thing, as reported here previously, Bush and his goons will persecute journalists who dare to expose the administration's questionable activities.

Secondly, Bush's hijinks have made it very dangerous for journalists to cover the biggest issue facing our country, i.e., the quagmire in Iraq. In invading that WMD-free, previously-unthreatening country, Bush stirred up a hornet's nest of Islamic fundamentalists. And, in doing such a fabulous job of securing Iraq's borders (like everything else), he let al-Qaeda in.

Thanks to Mr. Bush's brilliant international relations policies, 86 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the start of that war, and two are still missing, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Jill Carroll is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Read more.]

It's a lot safer to give up and just report on what Brad and Angelina are doing. And that probably pays more.

Way to spread "freedom", George.

Where have all the journalists gone?

I hear a lot of bickering about media bias these days. The right wingers complain that the media are biased towards the left. The left wingers insist that the media are biased towards the right.

Depending on the medium in question, either assertion might be correct. I offer another: The media are biased in favor of entertainment over acumen.

In all fairness, the print media are not nearly as guilty as their broadcast counterparts (although even the New York Times and Washington Post had initially jumped on the propaganda bandwagon in the run-up to the Iraq war). But, while the print media (with some clear-cut exceptions) might try their best to report the news in a fair manner, and present all sides in their editorial pages, reading newspapers and magazines is work. The average American doesn't want to take the trouble to read. The average American wants to sit back and be entertained. Newspapers and newsmagazines are not that entertaining in this electronic age.

And so we have cable news. Now, cable news is corporate owned, and these networks must be careful not to step on the toes of their corporate advertisers. And they must appeal to the masses in order to sell their sponsors' goods and services. In an age when more people know the names of the "American Idol" contestants than the names of their congressmen, cable news has to entertain in order to survive.

Once upon a time, TV news had Edward R. Murrow. The recent movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" documents Murrow's bravery and fierce integrity in taking on Senator Joe McCarthy's over-the-top anti-Communist witchhunt. That was journalism.

Then we had Walter Cronkite, who earned a reputation as "the most trusted man in America." He did not earn that title by being entertaining; he earned it by being thorough and truthful and honest. That was journalism.

So what passes for TV journalism today?

Today we have prime-time cable "news" programs that still devote an entire hour to Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba. They do this while ignoring the thousands of other missing persons who never make the news because they're not as pretty or as blonde as Natalee. In other words, they're not as entertaining.

Today we have perfectly coiffed newsmodels who read to us from teleprompters and practice their frozen smiles as they gloss over stories of fatalities in Iraq on their way to the latest Hollywood gossip. They might occasionally cut to a 60-second report by an authentic hard-working reporter like Christiane Amanpour, in the trenches sans stylist and trying to bring us the real news. But not too much, because it's not as entertaining.

I can think of two current TV news show hosts who still seem to work hard at maintaining their integrity: Keith Olbermann, who takes on the propaganda machine each weeknight in his "Worst Person in the World" segment on MSNBC's "Countdown"; and Bob Costas, who refused to host an episode of CNN's "Larry King Live" because the topic of the show was the already overdone disappearance of Natalee Holloway. But what does it tell you when these two examples of journalistic integrity both rose to fame as sportscasters? Do they get away with practicing real journalism because of their connection to sports, which is much more entertaining?

How can so many Americans sit idle with "American Idol" while our soldiers are dying in Iraq, Osama bin Laden is still at large, and our Constitution is eroding faster than a polar ice cap?

Is entertainment all that matters to us now?

Have we not only turned off our minds but also our hearts and our souls?

Have we lulled ourselves into Huxley's "Brave New World," with the media as our soma?

Can we wake up before it's too late? Can the media?